Surrey Police have apologised for a series of blunders which meant that Levi
Bellfield was free to kill two other young women.

Bellfield could have been linked to the abduction and murder of Milly Dowler in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, but basic police errors meant that detectives did not connect him with the crime until three years later.

By that time Bellfield, who was yesterday given a whole life tariff for Milly’s abduction and murder, had already murdered Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delegrange, 22, and attempted to kill 18-year-old Kate Sheedy.

Yesterday Surrey Police apologised for what they described as a “missed opportunity”.

That missed opportunity came the day before 13-year-old schoolgirl was snatched as she walked home from school when police believe he tried to abduct another girl, 11-year-old Rachel Cowles, just three miles from where he went on the snatch Milly.

Despite the Cowles family reporting the incident to police immediately, it was not passed to detectives working on the Milly inquiry when that began.

Police failed to link the cases for three years. The connection was only established when Mrs Cowles sent a letter to the Surrey Police chief constable, pointing out the similarities between the two cases.

Had the connection been established earlier it would have given officers twice the amount of potential evidence and should have seen Bellfield identified much sooner.

Yesterday the jury was discharged before they could reach a verdict in Miss Cowles’s case, but there will be no retrial and detectives are convinced Bellfield was responsible for the attempted abduction.

Assistant Chief Constable Jerry Kirkby, said: “With the benefit of hindsight what happened that day was far more significant than how we handled it at the time and it was a missed opportunity for the investigation.

“The fact that a man approached an 11-year-old girl and offered her a lift should have been prioritised and passed to the Milly investigation team. Had the incident been prioritised it would have provided a line of enquiry for the team to pursue.

"Questions will be asked whether Bellfield could have been caught and we must accept, and do, that mistakes were made."

Mr Kirkby said that Surrey Police have met with both the Dowler and the Cowles families to apologise. He also said that chief constable Mark Rowley has offered to meet with the families of the victims Bellfield went on to attack and murder.

But despite the force admitting the error, no officer has been disciplined over the mistake. And the force says it has no plans to refer the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for an independent review of the inquiry.

Miss McDonnell’s family have called for an investigation, saying their daughter would still be alive if it were not for the mistake. And yesterday the IPCC got in touch with the family to discover whether they intended to make a formal complaint.

Mr Kirkby also admitted failings in the house to house enquiries. Despite officers visiting Bellfield’s girlfriend’s home 11 times they did not identify that Bellfield was living there and did not attempt to discover, failing to telephone the letting agent.

The officer admitted that enquires were “extensive but not exhaustive” and added: “We accept we should have been more exhaustive.”

Surrey Police also fixated variously on a list of erroneous lines of enquiry including the suggestion that her dad, Bob, was behind the murder – going so far as to bug his home and vehicle. A white van, a green Mazda and a blue Saab were also lines of investigation before Bellfield’s name entered the frame in 2004.

But even then they continued to focus on a local sex offender who could not provide an alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He was only finally ruled out in 2008.